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Back Falling Save as PDF
Chapters (29)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER PIKE
  29. Copyright Page

The girl wanted more details. Kelly could not give them to her. Her vision blurred and she slumped to her knees and dropped the phone. She tried desperately to hold onto her intestines but her fingers vanished in a slippery gore. The burning would not stop, the Acid Man was inside her now. Even if he was dead, he lived there. She was his sixth victim, a statistic, and her own husband didn’t even love her anymore. But the Acid Man had been right when he had said pain could not heal pain. Even if she did survive, she knew she would never recover.

That was her last thought before she blacked out.

THREE

THREE

An itchy right leg woke Matt Connor—four months after he had leapt from the plane and into the ocean. He scratched the scar for a minute before he realized he was back in the real world. The skin on his leg had been tender even after it had healed but he didn’t mind. It was a fun itch to scratch—a problem easily solved. And he knew that if the scar was all the damage he had to show for that night, then he had gotten off lucky.

Yet he awoke with many emotions. Since he had killed Matt Connor. he had felt relief. It was as if a portion of his grief had died with the name. The last months in his trailer on the outskirts of Modesto—a boring city if ever there was one—had changed him. In the guise of Simon Schiller, he had picked up odd jobs at local construction sites, working for cash at half his old rate. His routine was simple. He installed an occasional bathroom, went for long walks, and read practically a book a day. He didn’t even rent DVDs nor watch TV, nor go out to eat.

His trailer cost two hundred bucks a month and even at that stringent rate, it was no bargain. A twenty foot long box of metal, all it had to recommend it was a working toilet and complete isolation. But it suited his austere state of mind. There was nothing more simple than being dead. He thought of himself that way, and it was not depressing.

He had overstayed his welcome in the twilight zone, though. He had planned to return to L.A. a month earlier and complete his revenge. It was now May, four months since he had leapt from the plane. The faint stirrings of peace had slowed his hand. The idea of seeing her again filled him with dread. It brought him back to the torturous nights he had spent staking out David’s home in the days after her betrayal. Often he thought of letting it all go and living forever as a nobody.